Sol Studios

Sol Studios (also known as The Mill or The Sol) is a recording studio located in Cookham, Berkshire, England. The recording studio and control room are part of the complex property, along an old watermill and residential wheelhouse in the countryside.^[1] The property was bought in 1974 by Gus Dudgeon, and the recording studio was built in the following year.^[1] Gus ran the studio as his own production facility until running into financial trouble when the studio was sold to Led Zeppelin's Jimmy Page. Page decided to revert to the old name of "The Sol".

HSH Music, a partnership of Rod Halling, Roy Shipston and Simon Holmes, purchased the studio from Page in 1988. They redeveloped it over the next two years into a commercial three-studio complex, utilising a quadruple garage on the site as Studio 2 and part of the old Mill Wheel housing as Studio 3. Chris Rea liked Studio 2 so much that he decided to block book it for a year at a time.

In February 1994, HSH Music sold the site as a "residential" property. The new owners, however, failed to grasp that the building was built like a nuclear shelter and not really suitable for conversion. They subsequently sold it to Chris Rea, who owned it until 2006.^[2]

Artists

In 1977, the first music artist to record in the studio was the Dutch band Solution with Fully Interlocking (produced by Dudgeon) and mixed their next album ...It's Only Just Begun... there. That same year the single "Almost Gone" by Barry Mann and Cynthia Weil was recorded followed in 1978 with one song by Larry Smith, Back and Fourth by Lindisfarne, Elton John's album A Single Man including some unreleased tracks, as well the Chris Rea's debut album Whatever Happened to Benny Santini? with the 1979 follow-up Deltics. Also in 1979-80 Shooting Star's self-titled debut album, and two Voyager albums Halfway Hotel (1979) and Act of Love (1980).

In 1980, the Irish band